This is a really comprehensive article on food prepping! I was very taken by your last item on “Edible Landscaping.” There is a natural antibacterial, antiviral product called “Sambucol,” that is a syrup (patented) made from black elderberries. There is another syrup similar called “Sambucus,” which is the botanical name for black elderberries. Not only do they taste delicious — like something to top your ice cream sundae with! — they are pretty amazing for coughs, colds, and flu. I am thinking that that might be a good thing to have growing in our yards when SHTF.
I’ve gotten a lot of flour sugar, stuff for scratch cooking, something like bullion cubes, evaporated milk, yeast, can veggies you can throw together all kinds of soups. I ordered powdered eggs and butter, biscuits and gravy, homemade beans, I have done some canning, of meats and made some spatgetti sauce for canning. Think camping, I got a dutch oven-good for cakes and breads.
While these guides may be made available through Print on Demand services, they're just as likely to be distributed primarily as direct PDF downloads. These get passed around forums, reviewed on survivalist blog networks, and included on "USB survival libraries"—normal USB drives loaded with PDFs of survival books and reference materials. When the guides are being sold directly from the producers, you'll often see them bundled with a few bonus guides (maybe only 15 to 25 pages) with clickbait-flavored listicle-type titles: The 25 Biggest Mistakes That Will Get You Killed When the Shit Hits the Fan. 10 Must-Have Bug-Out Pack Items. The 15 Best Survival Guns for Stockpiling. That sort of thing.
If there was anything my freeze-dried food experiment taught me, it was how lucky I was to be able to walk down the street and buy a sandwich whenever I wanted to—but also how far I was from being self-reliant in the more quotidian sense. If freeze-dried meals are becoming increasingly popular in America, then maybe it’s because many of us realize that if something really bad happened, we wouldn’t know the first thing about surviving for a week on the ingredients lying around in our pantry. But as we continue to be bombarded by headlines foreshadowing epic floods, economic collapse, and nuclear escalation, there’s nothing wrong with finding a little peace of mind in a bag of dehydrated Chicken A La King.
74. Essential oils – Having a good stock of essential oils will be very useful if the system goes down and its hard to find quality medicine. Essential oils are inexpensive and needs no prescription to buy them and can be used for antiseptics, relieve headaches, promote sleep, reduce anxiety, treat wounds, etc … Here is an article on the 25 uses of lavender which is considered the jack of all oils! You will want to have in stock a starter kit of essential oils!
Mindset is everything. Mental preparation comes first. I would change number 12 to number 1 and say,”practice, practice, practice…”. A wilderness solo for a few days (after you “practice, practice, practice…” for a while) will cause a dramatic change in your self reliance level. It did mine and that’s why almost everything I acquire has multiple possible uses. For instance, my business card case is metal and has possibilities as a weapon and a signaling mirror. “Wildwood Wisdom” by Ellsworth Jaeger is a good place to start. He shows how to “think” survival like no one else.

Blame modern diets, blame our longevity, or blame the mistakes of mother nature - but the bottom line is that for most humans, dental problems are a question of "when", not "if". And when excruciating pain strikes at an inopportune time, it's really no laughing matter: in absence of adequate medical care, tooth problems have been known to push some people to the verge of suicide.

For muggings, keeping several $10 or $20 bills in your front pocket (and having real valuables somewhere else) can be enough to send them on their way; in busy locations, you should also be able to just ignore the mugger and briskly walk away. For more serious incidents, it may be useful to respond with something that is non-threatening but catches the assailant off guard. Simply feigning a panic attack or initiating a startling conversation ("hey, are you a friend of CJ? Pretty sure we've met last year!") can throw them off balance - allowing you to fight back or get away. Of course, you also need a plan for that next step; that's where your running skills, your bare-hands self-defense talents, or your weapons proficiency can come into play. But again, you need to actively practice and develop approaches that have a chance of working in real life; there's no verbal diversion strategy in the world that would give you enough time to fumble through your purse to find an old, gummed up can of pepper spray.
Places on the internet like http://www.doomsdayprepperforums.com are as busy as ever, and contrary to my own initial assumptions, much cooler heads seem to prevail on most online prepping communities. Members work to be helpful to one another and offer a wealth of good advice. Though the common refrain among preppers is that once SHTF (prepper shorthand for when the Shit Hits The Fan) the general mood will be every man for himself, doomsday preppers and survivalists believe that well-meaning people who want to protect themselves, their property and their families deserve some level of support, and they strive to provide that to each other.

Alas, most of the popular diets make this task awfully hard: they force their followers to abandon a lifetime of dietary habits, taste preferences, and eating schedules - and stuff themselves full of kale, turnips, quinoa, acai berry, or whatever else happens to be this week's "fat-fighting superfood". To add insult to injury, most of the nutrition fads are not actually backed by real, reproducible science; suffice to say that in the 70s, table sugar was widely touted as a dieting aid. Even today, weight loss advice tends to revolve around robustly debunked concepts - say, the existence negative calorie foods, the alleged superiority of low-carb but high-fat diets, the evils of HFCS and aspartame, or the significance of eating meals on a particular schedule thoroughout the day.

Ask a financial advisor about the possibility, and they will probably recommend keeping some of your funds overseas. But the odds aren't great of correctly picking a currency with more staying power than the one in which you get paid. Historically, the Swiss franc had a reputation for being an exceptionally safe choice, in part because of being the last major currency still quasi-pegged to gold; but Switzerland abolished this requirement in a referendum in 2000.

There is also a more utilitarian way of looking at it. From an individualistic, survival-focused point of view, the social costs (real or imagined) are basically moot: if you live in a place where guns are readily available to criminals, it's hard to think of a violent confrontation where not owning a firearm would put you at an advantage. There is a body of fairly compelling research showing that defensive gun uses happen in the US at a rate of somewhere between 500,000 and 1,500,000 times a year, with almost all confrontations resolved without firing a single shot. The inherent dangers of owning a firearm are often overstated by gun control advocates, too: unintentional injury or death due to having a gun at home is surprisingly rare.

I stored Flour, Sugar (white & Brown) along with yeast, baking soda/powder and crisco. My plan is to use a Bread machine to make bread. I have a large generator to power essential items. I also have a small generator (very quite) to power things during night time hours or my camper that has an oven we could use in an emergency. The best thing you can do now is to sit down and go thru some various scenarios in your head with varying degrees of severity. Then, write it all down on paper in note/bullet statement format. When you’re stressed-out is not the time to formulate a plan.

I hope this makes sense to you. It sounds like you have already figured out that with a growing teen and two additional children in the household, this will be a good start but that more will be needed over time. By doubling these quantities my guess is that you will be better prepared, food wise, than 90% of the population. And even without doubling the quantities, you will be better prepared.
I'm not quite crazy enough to say that epinephrine will help you survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse (you can go here for that). I'm just suggesting in a roundabout way that if you happened to be in a situation where something was trying to eat you, the increased heart rate and blood flow to your muscles brought on by a well-timed dose might just save your life.

Some preppers advocate "hardening" the perimeter of your home. The returns on this investment will vary; for example, high-security locks and reinforced doors may be worthwhile in high-rise apartment buildings, where the front door may be the only way in. For single-family homes, the burglars will probably not bother with the locks at all; forcing open a bathroom window takes much less work. Tall fences and locked backyard gates can help, although their benefits are limited in rural areas or in shady neighborhoods.

If you going to Cache with Electronics Inside the Container. Consider a 55-Gallon Open Top Drum. Steel Container will Act Like a “Faraday Cage” protecting the Electronics Within. Also consider a Poly-Pheyleneterephtalamide (C14H10N2O2/or simply Kevlar 49) Container Bag to Guard A Against Long Term Corrosion on the Steel 55-Gallon Drum. Kevlar, is Non-Biodegradable and will last for 10,000-years or Longer. But than Again Food Inside Probably WON’T…
The preservation of wealth after a civilization-ending event is a popular topic of idle banter in the prepper community. Some folks believe that commodities such as silver and gold would return as the basis of a primitive post-apocalyptic economy - and if we're wildly speculating, in the longer haul, that seems like a fair guess. But in the immediate aftermath, it seems more likely that economic activity would be minimal and limited to barter or communal ledgers. Nobody would want to exchange a candy bar for a gold coin if they can't be sure about being able to find any other food.
Here are just a few choice gems from The Prepper Journal's 11 Ways A Condom Can Save Your Life: starting fires (they're great at protecting tinder from moisture), hunting for food (sexiest slingshot ever!), and transporting up to two liters of water (yes, rule 34 applies; no, we won't provide the link). They also make serviceable stand-ins for rubber gloves and can be used to protect the muzzle of your other essential survival tool (killing it right now).

Did you know that most people in the United States have less than 2 weeks of food stored in their home?! If this includes you, it’s time to make a change! Take a look at your food supplies and estimate how long you could survive on it – for most beginners it’s pretty scary! Your first goal with food should be to have 1 month worth of meals stored, immediately after that you’re going to get 3 months worth as quickly as possible. Here is a great place to learn about storing your own food. Some additional fantastic resources for Food Storage are Everyday Food Storage and Food Storage Made Easy.

When Kafrina hit a few years ago, it was unbelievable to see the number of people who decided to ride out the storm instead of evacuating. As the “reliality” of the destruction of Katrina was sinking in on TV, what was so horrifying was watching all these “hundreds” of people without water! And nowhere to get it! They were completely cut off from civilization! As the next couple of days passed on, and still, no relief in sight, I watched in horror the actions do these people desperate for water! I wanted so badly to reach through my TV and hand them a bottle of water, but could not do that! I never felt so helpless in my entire life. And they were killing each over in an effort to get to water! With all the technology, with all the electricity, with all of our knowledge, we could not get a bottle of water to these people, and some died on the side of the road in desperation to get to water! I have never forgot how quick a people can destroy theirselves over they lack of water, and also for their lack of taking other precautions to keep themselves alive!
We tried the $85 Instant Loaded Potato & Cheesy Broccoli Soup from Simpli Prepare because soup might be an easy way to supplement the main survival meals. Packaged the same way as the shakes, with shaker bottle and algae oil, and with the same directions. Vendor confirmed this is meant to be a “just add water” product, not a simmer and serve hot sort of thing, and suggests using hot water from the tap if possible.
One major upside of freeze-dried food is its convenience. Since all its water content has been removed—via a process that involves exposing food to subzero temperatures, while removing the resulting water vapor with a vacuum—it’s easier than canned goods to transport on the fly. To “cook” Wise Company’s six-grain Apple Cinnamon Cereal, you just boil three and a half cups of water, dump in the powdery contents of the bag (minus the oxygen absorber), and cover the pot for 12 to 15 minutes.
I didn't know anything about the client, let's call him Dimitri, other than that he lived in Florida, and that he had about $600 for me if I could pump out 100 pages on how to survive the end of the world. The only way to make a living on writing projects at these prices is to do them quickly. In some cases, freelancers are asked to "spin" extant books—that is, to essentially copy the structure and content of those books but to make them new enough to reasonably (and legally) market them as new products. This is related to, but still distinct from the practice of article spinning, in which the same human-written article is quickly reorganized and reworded to create one or more additional "new" articles. (This is often done by software that has a built-in spintax that replaces keywords in the text with synonyms.)
Shelter. The usual combo is an appropriately-sized, waterproofed tent, a set of sleeping bags & pads, and possibly some compressible or inflatable pillows for comfort. In cold weather or during heavy rainfall, it's also possible to shelter in your vehicle, with Mylar blankets serving as a substitute for sleeping bags; and on a hot day, the same material and some rope can be used to improvise a shade. Again, the blankets are worth having in your car at all times.
Storing food for an emergency can be challenging but it does not have to be a chore. Eliminate the panic of attempting to get it all done at once and the process can almost be fun and game-like. Searching out deals – either with coupons or at sales – can be an adventure in and of itself. Involve the kids by asking them for suggestions and helping them make selections that they will enjoy eating.

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that the average homeowner should store at least three to five days of water and three days of food in case of an emergency or natural disaster. However, assembling an emergency kit, especially if you’re not entirely clear on what to purchase, can be a challenge. Wise Food Storage, thankfully, offers a line of emergency kits for the home and the car that are perfect for surviving emergency situations. Wise Food Storage specializes in preparing long-term, ready-made emergency meals and snacks. From freeze dried meats to dehydrated vegetables, Wise Food Storage carries a number of easy-to-prepare food items that prepared to last for years. Many of the food items are stored in specially designed pouches and extra-durable buckets that effectively seal out moisture and heat—in fact, when stored correctly in a dark, cool environment, Wise Food Storage meals and snacks can last for decades. Wise Food Storage offers a number of different emergency kits to meet a variety of different needs, including a five-day, one-person emergency kit as well as a survival kit that can meet the needs of six people for five days. The five-day kit for a family of six features nearly everything a person could need to survive during an emergency event, including 32 gourmet, ready-made, long-term entrees, water, a stove, cups, flashlights, first aid kits, blankets, matches, playing cards, and five extra-rugged backpacks. Wise Food Storage also offers emergency kits for particular needs or situations, as well. For example, the hunting survival kit features everything an outdoors enthusiast may need to survive in the woods, including an emergency sleeping bag, waterproof matches, an emergency candle, rope, a shovel, a first aid kits and a 4-in-1 flashlight. Wise Food Storage also carries a car emergency kit, which features jumper cables, robe, a first aid kit, duct tape, a survival whistle and a emergency blanket. By storing a few basic supplies in your home or car, you can ensure that you and your loved ones will remain safe and healthy in the event of a natural disaster or unforeseen situation.